Avanti Savoia
by Spacenarhwal
Summary: What begins as Amy and Rory's fabled trip to Rio turns into something else entirely when the Doctor apparently gets it wrong. Again. Now Amy, Rory and the Doctor are stuck on a doomed planet, facing something that no-one ever wants knocking on their doorstep.


The sniper rifle was heavy in Braddock's hands. He slapped his hand to the bottom of the laser, bringing out the bipod as he laid in what used to be an apartment building. A wispy, yellowish mist clung to the ground as Braddock scanned the mud below for movement- perhaps a flash of color, or a slight shift in the sickly mist that permeated the area. He saw nothing apart from the distant glow of infernal machines beyond the horizon. As usual, the front was quiet- especially this far away from their lines. "Hells, I can't believe they left this standing- it's like they're asking for us to use it as a scouting position." That was Corporal Connors- the other man in the sniping team. Braddock tried to forget about him as often as possible. "Yes Corporal, it is. Which is why you need to be extra vigilant here, and watch my fucking back. I, for one, actually intend to get out of this shithole with my life intact." Connors mumbled something like "Good bloody luck", but Braddock let it go. It wasn't worth getting into an argument with the man he had to trust his life to out here. Around thirty minutes into the seven hours of waiting that composed their 'recon mission', and after much fidgeting on the part of Connors, along with many sighs from Braddock, Connors suddenly jerked his head up a couple of centimeters. "The fu-" Braddock started but Connors hushed him before he could say anything more. "I hear something, sir." Braddock had to give it to him, the lad had the senses of a cyberhound. As Braddock focused, he heard it too. A wheezing sound, rising and falling in pitch- almost fading in and out. Both men, after furious hand gesturing, got up and slowly made their way down the building's chief stairwell, weapons at the ready. Connors prayed under his breath, and a cold feeling of dread gripped Braddock. And he was really so naive to think that he'd make it out of this mess.

"AMY! RORY! What'd I tell you, eh? Scanner says it, navigational controls confirm, we are on our way to RIO SEVEN!" The Doctor burst out to his two somewhat shocked companions. "But Doctor, I thou-" Rory's protestation that really, they only wanted to see regular, Earth Rio, was cut off by the Doctor insisting that "Rory! Rio Seven is an entire PLANET named for Rio! It's AMAZING! There are beaches as far as the eye can see, a carnivale once a year that encompasses a whole city, and some of the best cocktails this side of New New York (the first)." Rory shot a glance at Amy, who just rolled her eyes and mimed a nattering mouth behind the Doctor. It was clear that he was in what Rory termed "overexcited child" mode, and would not stop until they left their supposed destination. Rory had to admit, whilst he loved the Doctor like a brother (or, more accurately, a son), traveling with him could certainly get tiring. Rory was really looking forward to a proper break, just him and Amy (with the Doctor preferably running off in the distance somewhere), beaches, and margaritas. The Doctor skidded around the console room, pulling various bits and bobs on the console, even giving it a smack with a mallet at one point until the familiar shudder .of the Tardis materializing resonated through the control room. "Alright! We're here in one piece!" Amy exclaimed as she bounded to their room, only stopping to give Rory a kiss on the cheek, "I am going to get my bathing suit- you better find a good place on the beach, Rory!" The Doctor held the Tardis door open as Rory wandered over to him with an "après vous, monsieur." Rory exited the Tardis, took a look around, turned to the Doctor and said' "You know Doctor, maybe you should get a map or something."

"Be calm, Connors- whatever they've got down there, I've got an M-196. This can punch through a tank at 6 kilometers. Lord help whatever is standing three meters in front of it." Connors just bobbed his head as he continued to work his way down the stairs, his M-55 LAR slightly trembling in his grip. He continued to say litanies of protection beneath his breath. Braddock had seen too much of this war to believe in anything, but it warmed him to hear his name repeated in the chanting from time to time. Debris crunched beneath their combat boots as they reached the door to the lobby of the once- apartment building. Braddock pushed Connors behind him and slowly nudged the door open. He braced himself for searing heat, or an intense shock, or whatever their weapons did to people, but none came. Instead, he found himself staring at the absurd sight of two civilians having a heated debate about time maps, in the door of a blue, wooden box. His and Connors' reactions were exactly the same: "What the fuck."

The Doctor turned to the two new arrivals with a cheery "Hello there!" Rory was definitely less than cheery at the sight of them. Both were obviously soldiers, clad in helmets, assorted straps and webbing, long dark grey trench coats and what looked to be WWI gas masks if they had been brought into the future. Honestly, it was as if everything people associated with the horror of the Great War had been distilled and poured into two none too pleased looking men. (at least in Rory's eyes.) They were both holding advanced looking guns, which were pointed uncomfortably towards him, the Doctor, and now Amy who had just showed up at the door. The Doctor continued' "You see Rory! These chaps look like they could give us a hand! Isn't this planet Rio Seven? Fabulous beaches, great cocktails etc etc? I mean it certainly seems like I've gotten it wrong, I have to hand it to Rory, but I need to be sure we aren't on the other, not-really-talked-about-because-it's-a-bit-of-an-embarrassment muddy gross side of the planet." Rory couldn't tell what was happening under the gas masks' black lenses, but he knew confusion was high on the list. "I bet they're Puppets, boss." The soldier on the left spoke out to his commanding officer. He sounded young to Rory- like he was barely an adult. "Yeah, I think you're right, Connors. It's a pity. They're probably far too far gone at this point. Smoke them." Both men raised their weapons with practiced efficiency, and both entirely failed to ventilate the travelers in a hail of gunfire. The Doctor lowered his sonic screwdriver, and smiled at the men. "Now, fellas, look. I'm here for a holiday with my friends, and those plans generally don't involve being shot. Now, I'll ask again. Where are we?" "Well mate," said the leader, "you're all insane. This ain't Rio anymore."

"What is it now?" Rory blurted out.

"Hell."

"So what do we do with them, boss? We can't just leave them. They look like they're actual people." Connors was reading the results from the blood analysis kit he carried with him. "No nanites in the bloodstream- they're not puppets." "Well Connors, they appeared from thin air, and can disable our weapons trivially. We need to take them back to base. We need to see what they can do." Braddock took out his combat knife and pistol. "Tell HQ were coming back with three prisoners. I'll go give 'em the breathers, then we can move." Braddock left Connors' side and walked through the destroyed doorway to the lobby of the building. "RIGHT! Listen up, you three. These devices are emergency respirators. Put them in your mouth and nose and breathe normally. If we're lucky, your lungs won't melt. Now let's move." "Hold on a minute. We didn't agree to go anywhere with you lot! What the hell makes you think we will agree to come with you, ya bastards?" Amy stood up, hands on her hips, going full Scotswoman. Now we're going to get in our box, and fly away. And you can't bloody stop us. Boys! Let's go!" Amy was stopped by a sharp, metallic click. "Amy...hold still. These aren't laser weapons. He's pointing a slug pistol at you. I can't disable slug weapons with the sonic. They're just chemical reactions. Just this once, I think we have to go with them." "Fuck it. Fine. Let's go then."

Connors led the way for the small group as they trudged along. The area around them was bleak. The ground had no vegetation- it had been churned up by millions of shells slamming into it, and a thick layer of mud with a few stumps was all that was left of the former verdant forest that grew before the war. A miasmic layer of yellow fog clung to the ground- the remnants of chemical weapons used. Rory could smell the entire place through the mask. It smelled like a grisly 10 car pile-up he was rushed to outside Leadworth once. The stench of death. As he walked along, lost in thought, his foot hit an object, half buried in mud. A bronze globe. He heard a soft "Oh shit" from Braddock behind him. "Rory, is it? Listen to me, son. I need you to shift your foot a bit. I need to take a look at what you've stepped on." Rory did as he was told, moving his foot sideways an inch, making sure to apply the same amount of pressure as he was before. "Ok, looks like a false alarm. It's just a casing, not live. We can move on." Rory exhaled sharply, and Amy ran over to him and grabbed him in her arms. The Doctor wandered over to Braddock in the meanwhile. "Braddock, is it? I know I'm not really in the position to be asking questions here, but you must believe me when I say I don't know what is happening on this planet. What are you here to fight?" "Look, Doctor. I know who you are. Of course I do. My superiors have been praying you'd show up for ages. You might be able to help hold them off. I shouldn't tell you any more, though. I'll let the colonel deal with it when we get back to base. Now let's shut up and get moving. We have another few klicks to walk, and it's getting dark. They'll be finishing up with the survivors in the surrounding villages soon, and we need to be back to the trenches when that happens."

The group trudged on into the mist.

Rory's legs were on fire. They had been walking for hours at this point. The slate grey of the earlier sky had been replaced with the eerie glow of two misshapen moons shining down on the planet, and the occasional supernova of a ship getting torn apart in an orbital battle raging above the hellscape they were currently trudging through. Fortunately, the group had encountered no more hazards since the incident with the unidentified mine earlier in the day, and had simply continued through battlefield after battlefield, encountering the debris of past offensives- burned out tanks, ruined guns and the remains of the dead. On the way, no one had said much, but the two soldiers had given some background when the Doctor tried to make conversation. They were both scouts. Connors, the younger one, had signed on from the core human worlds recently, swayed by advertisement and the exaggerated victories of the UN forces that the news reported. Braddock had been in the marines a lot longer. He was from a farm world, and signed up in the beginning to escape a life that would consist of farming, and not much else. He would see his planet burn five years later, and had continued to fight simply because there was not much choice. The Enemy, as they called whoever they were fighting, lived to kill. They had swept into the human outer worlds, sparing no one, dealing the marines defeat after defeat. Maneuver warfare had gone out the window early on- their foes were highly mobile, and very tough. So the humans dug in. Orbital defenses were constructed, fleets were mustered, and when the enemy landed, entire continents became trench lines, bunkers and gun emplacements. It was war on a scale humanity had never seen. Gradually, the string of defeats evolved into a string of stalemates. Worlds locked in trench warfare, with neither side making significant breakthroughs. Rio VII had become one such world- the former resort planet had since become a massive network of defenses.

As the group finally reached UN lines, Rory saw these defenses firsthand. Trenches stretching as far as the eye could see, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers lining them, resting, cleaning weapons, listening to music or smoking. Rory wasn't exactly glad to see that the future still apparently hadn't gotten rid of cigarettes, but he supposed that the future had bigger problems. Tanks were dug in behind them, angular turrets rising like monstrous shadows out of the mud, weapons gently humming, with crews doing repairs on their scarred vehicles. Some ways behind those, massive guns rose into the air, staring into the night sky, ready to spit fire at the moons. The group finally reached a bunker, squat and brutalist, and were granted entry by the door guards. After a few more doors and sets of stairs down into the earth, the group entered the command center. Holographic maps were displayed on a table, with a few officers surrounding it. Soldiers manned communications devices attached to the walls, relaying orders to subordinates in the field. "Ah! Sergeant Braddock! Thank you." Rory's attention was drawn to a tired looking man in an officer's uniform. "Go with Connors to the mess hall. You both have earned a hot meal." Braddock and Connors both shook hands with Rory, Amy and The Doctor, saying goodbye and stepping out of the room. "So, Doctor, earlier today one of our techs found a blue box in one of the transports. I take it that'll be you?" "Ah yes, that's sexy all right. She usually manages to get somewhere near where I need her to be." The Doctor replied. The Colonel motioned for the new arrival to take seats around the table. "Doctor. I take it you know what we are fighting. I don't care what you think of our methods. We need your help. Please. We can't keep this war up forever. The fronts are collapsing. We need something - anything- that can help us turn the tide." Before the Colonel could continue, Amy muttered to the Doctor, "What does he mean by 'their methods'?" The Doctor turned to Amy and Rory with a cold look on his face, "I worked it out on the way here. It's a strategy that has proven effective throughout history. My people used it as well. You collect people who you cannot save or who choose to stay, and relocate them to outlying villages or settlements around an area you are trying to defend. They die, but buy time for everyone else to escape. Doubly so if there are military units in those villages. Colonel?" "The 8th Infantry and 22nd Mechanized volunteered to buy time for the civvies at the spaceport we are dug in around." The Colonel stated in response to the Doctor's implied question. "Amy, Rory. We should have left when we had the chance." A look of horror stretched across the Ponds' faces as they realized what the soldiers here were fighting. "Doctor. It isn't. Tell me it isn't them." Rory already knew the answer to his own question. The bronze globe underfoot, the charred bodies of the soldiers. "I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry." was the Doctor's only response, and in his eyes, Rory saw the echoes of an eternity of combat.

"Doctor! Back to the question at hand. You need to help." The Colonel was desperate. This man who he had heard so much about had to have some sort of plan, some sort of knowledge to help. "I am sorry, Colonel, but I just can't help you. This one is a fixed point. I know this war, and I am nowhere in it. You will survive, at great cost. But I can't help you." The Colonel looked at the Time Lord, anger and disbelief clouding his vision. "Damn you. They said you could help, you fuck. They said you could help avert more death, more suffering. Thanks for being a fraud, asshole." The Doctor simply replied, "Colonel, I am so, so sorry. But that's all I can do. Time doesn't work like that. I can't always step in. And it pains me more than you can imagine. But I simply can't." The Colonel sighed, collapsing into his seat once again. "Fine. I understand. But you're watching, Doctor. You're watching when they finally come for us." The Colonel turned to an aide. "Get the scouts from earlier. I want these three guarded."

Braddock and Connors reappeared, and the group exited the bunker. From the lines of artillery, Rory could see all the way to the front lines. Using binoculars, Rory could see men scramble into tanks, and infantrymen prepare themselves, steadying weapons and checking optics. Artillery crews loaded their guns with massive shells, preparing to fire. The whole line took on an air of eerie calm. The calm before a storm. An aide ran up to the colonel, and handed him a radio, a panicked look on his face. The Colonel pressed the speaker function on the comms unit, and the group was treated to a chorus of metallic shrieking. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXT-" The Colonel shut off the radio. "They always give us a heads up, the arrogant bastards. Williams. Tell all men to fire at will." The aide ran off to a field command unit, and all around Rory guns began to shift almost imperceptibly, correcting for targets. Then, all as one, the world exploded. Rory shook the ringing from his ears as the guns thundered again and again, lobbing their lethal payloads into the atmosphere. He looked through the binoculars, even though he didn't need to. He knew what was coming. He saw a tidal wave of bronze and gold machines gliding through the mud, never stopping, even as their comrades were ripped apart by artillery shells or laser fire or tank rounds. Gold casings shattered and mutants screamed but did not stop. They just kept coming, firing their burning hot blue beam weapons at the soldiers in the trench. Men shuddered and smoked, giving off an unnatural blue light as they burned. No matter how many men collapsed, the line seemed to be holding. The trench gave good cover, and the humans had superiority weapon wise. Any other army would have retreated. The Daleks just kept coming. If two were slain, their ruined chassis were pushed out of the way by three more Daleks, all screaming into the night. The battle raged on and on. Tanks were destroyed, their surviving crews bailing out and joining the men in the trenches. Soldiers fell back through trench line after trench line, losing more and more men as they went, but still holding. The guns kept firing, a rolling barrage covering the soldiers' retreat, killing as many Daleks as possible. Shell casings piled up around the group as the Colonel barked orders and encouragement to panicking platoon leaders, or tank crews desperately holding off the gold tide, encased in their metal tombs. The fight still raging, the aide ran up to the Colonel. "Sir. The last civilian transport is away. All civvies have jumped out of the system. HighCom is ordering full retreat. Transports will be here for us in 10 mikes." "Got it. Tell the engineers to prime the bunkers for detonation, then sound the general retreat." With a "Yes Sir!" the aide ran to the command post and began to relay instructions.

The UN marines had fallen back to the last few defensive positions, and the Daleks were close enough that Connors and Braddock were taking potshots with their rifles. Stray Dalek shots were beginning to fly past the top of the forward command trench and auto turrets, previously concealed, had begin to spit magnetically accelerated bullets at the ever advancing Daleks. Amy and Rory held each other as it seemed like the end of the world had come- Dalek beams flew over the top of the trench, causing the very sky to burn blue, and their shrieks mixed with the panicked shouts of soldiers pressed with their backs to a wall. The Colonel got on the comms unit, and shouted encouraging words to his men, all he while taking shots at the Dalek horde. Finally, the last defensive line collapsed, and men flowed into the command trench. Amy, Rory and The Doctor were handed rifles, and the soldiers steeled themselves for a final attack- for a final wave to break on them before they collapsed entirely. The Colonel shouted to his men; "This is it, lads! Our regiment traces its lineage to the Italian Alpini, who had a saying when they were all about to die: 'De Qui Non Si Passa!' Nobody passes here! I'll see you magnificent bastards in hell. Avanti Savoia!" He was answered with the roar of a thousand men and women, all fighting like wounded wolves backed into a corner. Daleks came, Daleks were killed. Men once again started to fall, and the ten minutes that Rory spent in that trench, waiting for a drop ship, were the longest ten minutes of his life.

Eventually the drop ships did come. The ragged remains of the unit had scrambled into them as the auto turrets and door gunners held off the horde as well as they could. The doors had shut, and the ships had rocketed into the sky. Once they were high enough, the nuclear devices buried under the command bunker detonated, evaporating Daleks for a ten kilometer radius. The drop ships docked with larger warships in orbit, and Rory and Amy eventually found themselves in an observation room, looking out across the ruined planet they had been on. The Colonel had taken the Doctor off into another room for debriefing, and to see if he or his superiors could get any information regarding the enemy out of him, to try again to convince him to be their weapon. Rory and Amy were sat on chairs, with shock blankets and mugs of tea Connors had given them. Braddock hadn't made it. He was shot down trying to cover Connors as he climbed into the drop ship. They stared out the thick glass as Dalek ships gave up their chase of the UN warships, instead focusing on firing on the surface of the planet once known as Rio VII, reducing it to magma. "I asked what Avanti Savoia meant, Rory." Rory turned to Amy, confused. "What do you mean, Ames?" "The Colonel said 'Avanti Savoia' earlier. It's apparently the Italian equivalent of Banzai- it's to encourage soldiers to suicidal attacks. Do you think they knew?"

"Yeah Ames, I think they did."

"Many historians view the Fall of Rio VII as a turning point in the war. The loss of such a high profile planet led the war effort to shift into full gear amongst the inner worlds, and recruitment skyrocketed as the inner worlders realized that the war was coming to them, soon. Recent documents released by the UN Security Commission also reveal another turning point. A scientist, Doctor John Smith, was pulled off the planet, and was responsible, in the coming weeks and months, for a number of new technologies that allowed UN forces to make effective war against the Daleks, and push them back, reclaiming our destroyed homes. Since then, Humanity has managed to rebuild, but the sacrifices of those made in the war, our fallen brothers and sisters, will never be forgotten.

Avanti Savoia."

-Excerpt from speech given by Cpl William Connors of the 5th Mountain Division on V-D day anniversary to a collection of comrades and friends, including one Mr. and Mrs Rory and Amy Williams, and a Doctor who did not give a name.

A/N- Howdy. In a somewhat foolish moment, I decided to upload this onto fanfiction. It's an idea- making Doctor Who a bit darker, especially in terms of enemies- that has been floating around my mind for a while, and over the past couple of weeks I have written it out. I think villains like the Daleks are slightly wasted sometimes in Doctor Who. The idea behind them is horrifying, and I don't think they recently have been used well at all. I was also inspired by the First World War (unsurprisingly). It is a period of history that I have been looking more and more into given both the centenary and the glut of new popular culture about the war. Before someone points it out, yes the title is the same as one of the levels in the game, but after I looked up the words Avanti Savoia, I thought it would make a good title for this piece.

This is also my first time on the website, and my first time uploading, so if you think this story needs a higher rating or something please let me know through reviews or PMs or something. Thanks for reading if you've gotten this far through my nattering, and thanks for any reviews, positive or negative, that you might leave.


End file.
